Why I love Calabasas, and why I'll never live there


There are few places on planet earth that have made me feel more at home than Calabasas, California, even though I've never lived there, and never will.

I live in Arizona, so when I refer to Calabasas, I just say "Los Angeles". But it's my Los Angeles. And actually, it's not Los Angeles at all.

My Los Angeles is centered in Thousand Oaks, and goes from Santa Barbara to Woodland Hills. If you know your California geography, you will be saying "huh?", but when you're there, it all flows together. Other than seeing more surfers than usual along the Ventura county line, it's all the same.

The reason that I moved to Phoenix is that I wanted to buy a house, which I did. In California, in my late twenties, despite having a good-paying corporate job, I despaired of ever being a homeowner. A lot of people were buying houses up in the desert, in places like Palmdale, and commuting their lives away. And when people suggested that I look at buying a house there I thought, well, I might as well live in Phoenix. Spending over three hours a day commuting wasn't what I considered living!

So I moved back to Phoenix. I got a good corporate job, I bought a house in Glendale, which is a nice little suburb. And I promised myself that I would still visit California. But I never really did, until a little over ten years ago, and "the car guys".

One of my oldest and dearest friends, whose name I will not mention here, sells classic cars at the Barrett-Jackson car auction in Scottsdale. He lives in LA. And for many years he has been visiting me here, camping out for a week or so, and bringing whoever he wants to, with my full permission. And that included a good friend of his from Calabasas, whose name I will also not mention here. I just call them all "the car guys".

All I asked in exchange for using my house was the opportunity to do the same in California. And I did visit a few times. And then I visited Calabasas.

Something clicked for me in Calabasas. It's as if my DNA just matched up with the place. I could breathe. I felt at home. It's so hard to describe, but it's an amazing feeling. From that point on, I was determined to go back, which I have done for many years, and will be doing again this year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is ...
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the...
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me...
Read more